Republicans, Democrats, and men

The Democrats should not take Joe Biden's lead for granted long-term.

This analysis shows how Trump has gained with younger people, men and college graduates compared to 2016, regardless of race. For example, a young black man is not an automatic Democratic voter! Biden is leading Trump because he has gained more with older people (who vote more reliably), women, and non-college graduates. But as Hillary Clinton's performance showed, those groups are not automatic Democratic voters either. If you strip away Trump's tweeting, his grotesque appearance, corruption, incompetence, laziness, ignorance and evilness, the deliberate stoking of animus, the catastrophic bungling of the pandemic response etc., he has been a fairly "normal", populist Republican President. And particularly younger men like that, whatever their skin colour.

So if the Republicans can avoid a California GOP-like death spiral of increasingly open racism and QAnon kookery, their obvious route for 2024 and beyond is to field a competent, populist, outwardly less racist person. That person, say a Josh Hawley, would then decry the rapacious, neoliberal, identity-obsessed (Democratic) establishment which seemingly offers poor black or Hispanic people only, say, "pronouns and welfare", but not good jobs. He would make it seem attractive to shake things up. So if the Republican message in 2024 was "Stop bad trade deals, low-wage immigration, bad infrastructure" etc., what would a good Democratic response be to sway, for example, a 25-year-old Hispanic man in Florida? "What he said, but with open borders"? Obviously no.

This means that the Democrats need a strong platform after Biden!